If you're asking me, it's because I travel frequently on the same days I have to work, either outbound or return, so I'm very picky about flight times. It's also too risky for me to just plunk down the change and kiss it good bye if something happens. Finally, I fly enough to make the benefits of an FF program worth looking at.

Next, let's qualify my hotel stays as "when I stay in hotels, I use HW extensively." I don't stay in hotels very often. Lemme think here, I've had a whopping 5 stays this year.

So, let's put this in perspective... if you flew three or four times per year domestically (or even six or seven times per year up and down one of the coasts) would you really realize much benefit from an FF program? If you could save $50 using PL/HW and not get any of the bennies, would you do it? How about if you flew 25k miles in a year? 50k? 75k? 100k? At a certain point, the FF bennies become something worth looking at.

My hotel stays are like flying three or four times per year. What's in it for me after three, four, or five stays? Not a whole lot. If I'm saving $50 *per night* it adds up. My most recent trip to DFW netted me what I guess would be a $100/night savings over the hotel website. That savings outright paid for my $188 LAX-DFW plane ticket. I never HW'd that airfare, so I don't know how much I "overspent."